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I'm not going to say that when you hit a certain age, suddenly it's no longer safe to lift in the 3 to 5 rep maximum strength range. I rarely train with low reps (and heavy weights) anymore So without further ado, here's what training for muscle at 50 is like compared to age 20 or 30, for me, anyway…
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At the least, I hope this gives some inspiration and encouragement to keep lifting for life. In this post, I would simply like to share my own personal experience, from a serious bodybuilding background, and hopefully readers of every age can benefit from something here. This isn't medical advice, it isn't even prescriptive training advice, necessarily, and it won't apply to everyone. There was too much ground to cover it all in social media comments so I promised I'd write something in depth for the blog, so here I am with a feature-length article. Is it harder to gain muscle after 50? After 40? If you have a bad (knee, elbow, back, hip, shoulder etc) how do you train? How do you avoid injuries? We have a lot of readers and followers in the age 40 to 60 demographic group, and a bunch of them reached out and asked me if I had advice, or they were simply curious how my training is different now compared to when I was younger. My age 50 Instagram selfie triggered quite a few conversations about this. I do have some aches and pains here and there and use extreme caution on some exercises. Not that I'm against trying new challenges - I did run a couple half marathons this past year (but why a “muscle head” took up running is another story for another day).Īctually, most of what I do in the gym today at 50 is the same as it's been for years, though not everything is the same. I train smarter today, but I never changed my style or followed the crowd. In fact, I've been training for 36 years straight without ever missing more than a week (except that one time I took two weeks off, but I've got a pretty good record for consistency).Īnd while I don't compete in bodybuilding contests anymore, I still use the same classic bodybuilding system of training because that's what I love. That sparked quite a few comments, mostly positive, like “Hey, still looking good Tom!” or “Thanks for the inspiration, dude!” I appreciated that, because I'm a bit older now, but I ain't over the hill! I still train as hard today as I did in my twenties and thirties. I added some captions underneath to explain how I thought it was different training for competition in my thirties compared to training after 50 and doing it purely for the joy of it. It was also my first and only age 50 selfie.įor an interesting comparison, I put the current pic side by side with an old bodybuilding shot when I was in contest shape at age 33. Rarer still, I actually "put it out there" on Instagram. Why is that any big deal? Well it's not, really, it's simply a rarity because I've always hated selfies (the look on my face says it all). In 2018 I took a selfie! Yep, one selfie!